It was a sad day for the fashion industry when, this time last year, legendary couture master Yves Saint Laurent passed away from brain cancer on June 1st at the age of 71 in his Paris home. Nine hundred guests, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, French First Lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy, Giorgio Armani, Stefano Pilati, John Galliano, and Hubert de Givenchy attended the couturier’s funeral on June 4th of last year at the Eglise Saint-Roch in Paris. This year, on June 2nd, a mass was held to mark the first anniversary of Saint Laurent’s death.

Held again at Paris’ Eglise Saint-Roch (near the Louvre), the memorial service was open to the public and attracted Saint Laurent’s longtime associates, employees, customers, and former models, along with a number of designers. Among those who joined Pierre Berge to remember Saint Laurent were Hubert de Givenchy, Agnès Trouble of agnès b., Giambattista Valli, former French culture minister Jack Lang, and Ségolène Royal, the former presidential candidate.

During the mass, live renditions of Mozart’s “Missa Solemnis” and “Missa Grande” were played by the L’Ensemble Parisien orchestra. Pierre Berge, the late couturier’s companion and business partner of 50 years, gave a very personal speech in which he recounted how he first met Saint Laurent, back when the designer was only 21 and had just shown his first collection for Dior. He movingly discussed how they were destined to meet and eventually ended up becoming one of the most powerful duo in fashion – very similar to the partnership between Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti which was recently recounted in the documentary film “Valentino: The Last Emperor.”